New Johns Hopkins Study: “Lockdowns Have Had Little To No Public Health Effects” And “Imposed Enormous Economic and Social Costs”

“Lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument”

A new study out of the renowned Johns Hopkins University has concluded that global lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

The study was authored by Jonas Herby, special advisor at Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark; Lars Jonung, professor emeritus in economics at Lund University, Sweden; and Steve H. Hanke, a Professor of Applied Economics and Founder & Co-Director of The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.

The authors wrote that “While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.”

The focus of the study, according to the authors was to “determine whether there is empirical evidence to support the belief that ‘lockdowns’ reduce COVID-19 mortality.”

The researchers defined lockdowns as “any government mandate that directly restrict peoples’ possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel.”

The researchers further noted that “To answer our question, we focused on studies that examine the actual impact of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality rates based on registered cross-sectional mortality data and a counterfactual difference in-difference approach.”

In other words, did lockdowns reduce COVID deaths?

The conclusion is no.

“Lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average,” the study notes.

It adds “shelter-in-placeorders (SIPOs) were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average,” further noting “Specific non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.”

In other words, lockdowns don’t do anything to save people from COVID.

The authors concluded, “our meta-analysis fails to confirm that lockdowns have had a large, significant effect on mortality rates.”

In a further analysis of “lockdown vs. no lockdown, facemasks, closing non-essential businesses, border closures, school closures, and...

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